Rondo Alla Americana
by Pargoletta
Summary: Justin’s fortieth birthday takes a disappointing turn. In an effort to cheer himself up, he goes out for something different and encounters a man he had thought was consigned to the distant past.
1. Concerto

Disclaimer: Characters belong to Showtime and CowLip. No money is being made off of this work.

* * *

Hi there! Poking my head into a new fandom to write for. I have to confess that I've always had kind of a soft spot for Ethan, but then, I'm a music student, so it's not such a strange thing. I think the producers didn't do nearly enough with him, so here's a glimpse twenty years into the future, on Justin's fortieth birthday.

A note about the title: A Rondo is a musical form, in which the principle theme alternates with several contrasting secondary themes -- for instance, it might go A B A C A D. "Rondo Alla Americana" simply means "A Rondo in the American style."

* * *

**1. Concerto

* * *

**

_Click._

"And it's WCBS-AM 880 in the morning!" the radio announcer sang out. "Headlines, sports, business, and traffic and weather together on the eights! WCBS news-time now is eight o'clock." This was followed by the unusually annoying music sting that was the reason Justin had selected that station to rouse him from his bed in the mornings.

He let the announcer's officious voice drag him from between the sheets, and half-listened to the headlines as he smoothed the covers and headed to the bathroom for a piss and a gargle. Hostilities had flared between Israelis and Palestinians, and Justin snickered as his inner Brian remarked that that particular conflict had been going on for seventy-five years now, and therefore didn't really qualify as "news." The Knicks had lost last night, the weather was to be expected for this time of year, and Manhattan was a traffic jam, as it had probably been ever since Peter Stuyvesant had first set foot on the island.

Justin decided that he had been oriented enough, padded out of the bathroom, and clicked the radio off. What next? Kitchen. Coffee. Another few minutes of fussing with beans and machinery, and soon the comforting smell rose as the coffee machine chugged away. It was a perfectly reconditioned old-fashioned diner model that Brian had bought and shipped from Pittsburgh for Justin's thirty-ninth birthday . . . God, could it possibly have been a year ago today?

Justin pulled on his bathrobe and headed for the door. The _Times_ lay just outside in its little plastic wrap, and the date on the masthead made it impossible to lie. If the _New York Times_ claimed it, it had to be true. Today was indeed Justin Taylor's fortieth birthday.

"God, I'm old," he told the newspaper with a chuckle, and carried it back into the kitchen. The coffee was ready, and Justin poured a cup and put a bagel in the toaster. There was a stack of Justin's birthday mail carefully saved up and waiting for him on the kitchen table, but certain rituals take precedence even over birthdays. Coffee and the _Times _crossword, and then the mail. Everything in its proper order.

Forty-five minutes later, the coffee was gone, the bagel was eaten, and Justin had to admit that he was hopelessly stumped with only two-thirds of the crossword solved. Oh, well. He'd never been much good at crosswords. It was time for the mail.

Deb's card featured a naked man with only a strategically placed birthday cake rendering him fit to be sent through the mail, as well as a check that was probably more than she could afford, but that Justin had the good sense not to turn down. Michael had sent a hastily typed short story about Rage and JT (did it count as fanfiction if it was written by the creator?), to which Ben had appended a short note. The envelope with the Canadian postmark contained an exquisite handmade birthday card with a properly thoughtful inscription from Mel and Linds. Brian, of course, could not be bothered to sign a card, but would probably e-mail later in the day. Mom and Molly's cards both included wry commentary on the significance of one's fortieth birthday. The final card was from Barry Schneider, an old ex who had become a surprisingly good friend.

_Sorry I can't be there to congratulate you in person,_ the note read, _but here's a night out with a touch of class for your fortieth. Love, Barry._

Justin looked into the envelope again and found a single ticket to the New York Philharmonica's Tribute to Tchaikovsky. He smiled. Barry was always trying to interest Justin in non-visual art. Usually they compromised with shows at the Roundabout and dark jazz clubs, but the Phil? Clearly, Barry thought that the "occasion" merited something fancier.

Still chuckling, Justin moved to his computer to learn what the world required of him today. To his surprise, Brian's birthday e-mail popped up right away. A closer look at the date stamp and the typos revealed that it had been sent the night before, probably while Brian was under the influence of God only knew what. Well, Justin would simply have to save the return call for later in the day, after Brian had slept off last night's debauchery. There were the usual requests for meetings, one formal request for a speaking engagement at a college somewhere upstate, and some communiqués from the co-curator of the Roy Lichtenstein retrospective that Justin was arranging at the Davidson.

After he finished replying to his e-mail, Justin decided to check the Phil's schedule for the evening. He already had plans to have dinner and drinks with his latest flame, a sculptor by the name of Daniel Born, but it couldn't hurt to see exactly what Barry had wanted for him.

As stated on the ticket, the program tonight was a tribute to Tchaikovsky, and the splash page promised a selection of works that spanned the length of Tchaikovsky's career. Normally, Justin would not have cared about the composer one way or the other, but he had designed sets for some local ballet school's recent production of _The Nutcracker_ the previous Christmas, and the name stuck in his mind. The first three works on the program, _The Storm_, the _Capriccio Italien_, and _Mozartiana_, meant nothing to him. Following the intermission, the Phil had programmed the apparently legendary D Major Violin Concerto, featuring the special guest soloist -- Justin's stomach plummeted, and his mouth went dry -- Ethan Gold of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Justin's first instinct was to grab his cell and call Barry to scold him for his tactlessness, but he thought better of it after a moment. He had never discussed Ethan with anyone after he had gotten back together with Brian the first time

_Twenty-one years ago, Christ, even the memory is old enough to buy a drink_

so there was no possible way that Barry could have known just what his gift would do to Justin. And, to be honest, even Justin wasn't sure. The memory of Ethan's betrayal

_Half a lifetime ago, just let it slide_

still stung, but the sting inevitably came accompanied by memories of passion and picnics, and secrets whispered in the dark, and all that he had wanted that Brian could not give

_Maybe that twenty-one-year-old memory really needs a drink_

Justin shook himself in irritation. Well. It wasn't like he could go anyway. He had plans with Daniel. He would write Barry a nice thank-you e-mail explaining that he hadn't been able to use the ticket but that he appreciated the thought, and he would go out with Daniel, eat a lovely, overpriced dinner, drink something highly alcoholic, and, with any luck, end up fucking Daniel's brains out to end his special day. No need to resurrect past loves at all, not when the present beckoned.

* * *

As birthdays went, this one was fairly pleasant. A bouquet of flowers was waiting for Justin at his studio from his assistant, who thoughtfully deflected all his calls so that Justin could have the morning to work in peace. He was working on a new series of paintings that involved minute detail work. While this had gotten easier over the years, his right hand had never completely regained its dexterity, and fine work always meant slow work. But Justin was patient, and allowed himself to sink deeply into the fine mechanics of brush and paint, and time expanded, approaching eternity.

A gaggle of colleagues from the Lichtenstein retrospective arrived before eternity did, but they brought the promise of a birthday lunch at a swank new café in Midtown, so Justin forgave them. Though it was the middle of the day, and he had more detail painting to do, Justin allowed himself to partake in the champagne toast that his co-curator offered. These were still colleagues, not yet friends, but he was pleased to discover that he enjoyed doing something social with them, and decided that he might be inclined toward more such events if the opportunity presented itself.

They adjourned from the lunch to the gallery for a brief meeting. When it was over, Justin took a few minutes to head to a park and call Brian. Amazingly enough, Brian actually remembered sending his drunken birthday e-mail, and followed it up with a few words of veiled congratulations that were, as always, exactly what Justin expected and yet not quite enough. Kinnetik was making money hand over fist, and there was probably a naughty pun in there somewhere, but both Brian and Justin let it hang unspoken in the air.

"When are you moving to New York?" Justin asked, as he always did.

"When I feel the need to," was the equally traditional reply.

"You could make so much more money here."

"I'm already making more than I know what to do with. Why give up a good thing?"

"The challenge?"

"I get plenty of challenge even in the ol' Pitts." Brian chuckled a little. "It is a global economy, Sunshine. New York isn't the center of the world. Nowhere is anymore."

"How about the boys?"

"Fresh crop at Babylon every year."

Justin snorted. "Aren't you a little --"

"Old?" He could just imagine Brian's smirk. "Don't you know what Michael said to me? I'm Brian Kinney. I'll never grow old."

"So fifty-two is the new thirty?"

There was a pause, and Justin knew he had touched a nerve. "How about you? You going out tonight?"

Justin nodded out of habit, though such a gesture was useless on the phone. "Yeah. Guy I met at a gallery opening a couple of weeks ago. We're going to do dinner and drinks."

"Fuck him good for me."

"I will."

"Time for my two-thirty with the Pasta People," Brian said, as breezily as ever. "Gotta go make the dough from selling their dough. Take care of yourself, Sunshine."

"I love you, too."

With a press of a button, the call ended. Justin sat on the park bench and allowed himself precisely two minutes of mingled joy and melancholy, then turned the phone off and went back to the studio.

* * *

He allowed himself to slip into the timelessness of his work, and was startled to discover that six o'clock had come. He was supposed to meet Daniel at six-thirty, and it would be a bitch and a half getting across town in rush hour traffic. A bit of hasty cleanup, a comb dragged through hair that was mostly still blond, sport coat grabbed from its hook, and Justin was out the door. As he waited on the corner for the traffic light to change, his phone beeped at him to indicate that he had a new message. The number was unfamiliar at first, but then Justin remembered that it was Daniel's.

"_Hi Justin,"_ came Daniel's recorded voice. _"It's me. Listen, I'm really sorry, but I'm going to have to take a miss on tonight. I am so sorry to have to miss your birthday, and I was really looking forward to that club you were telling me about, but I just got the news that my mother is sick. I'm taking the next plane out of LaGuardia to go be with her. I will call you the moment I have news, and I swear I will take you out the moment I get back, but tonight is a no go. Really sorry."_

Well, shit. As excuses went, "I-have-a-sick-parent" was getting more believable as Justin and his friends waded through middle age, but still. It was only his goddamn birthday, and Daniel had only been (if Justin was being honest with himself) the big birthday present that Justin had been looking forward to giving himself. In one fell swoop, his evening was gone, and nothing to do but go home and heat up leftover jambalaya or something. Justin turned around and headed for the subway station, consoling himself with the thought that jambalaya was always better on the second day.

* * *

Back in his apartment, he dragged out a pot from the cabinet from under the sink, and poured himself a glass of wine. As he did so, his eye fell on the stack of birthday mail. Sitting on top was the envelope from Barry that contained the single concert ticket. In the morning, Justin had pushed it from his mind with thoughts of Daniel, but now . . .

The concert was at eight. If he skipped the jambalaya and just ate a quick sandwich, he could be at Lincoln Center just in time for curtain. What the hell? It wasn't like anything was going to happen. Ethan would be just as forty-years-old as Justin, and probably not nearly so magnetic as he had been to a love-starved nineteen-year-old. What could it hurt? And then he could write Barry and say that he had actually used the ticket.

Moving as if in a dream, Justin put the pot away and reached for bread, peanut butter, and jelly. There was just enough time left to change from studio clothes into nice pants and a dress shirt. He skipped the tie, and was out the door just in time to catch the train.


	2. Allegro Moderato

**2. Allegro Moderato

* * *

**

Just before eight o'clock, Justin sank down into the velvet seat in Avery Fisher Hall. Barry had bought him a seat in the middle of the main auditorium, what his ticket called the "Preferred Orchestra" section. Justin supposed that this was so that he could see the orchestra better. The people on either side of him chatted quietly with their companions, neatly relieving Justin of the need to make conversation. Instead, he took his program out of his coat pocket and flipped through it.

He skipped through the advertisements for luxury cars and champagne, pausing only briefly to note that they had probably not been done by Kinnetik; there was no hint of any impropriety in the photos or the copy. He skimmed the program notes, finding the brief biography of Tchaikovsky far more interesting than the pages of musical analysis of the separate works. A piece of paper mentioning an invitation-only gala reception following the concert fluttered out and landed on the floor. Justin picked it up and slid it back into the program, not wanting to litter the magnificent amber wood concert hall.

The next page bore a black-and-white photograph of a man in white tie holding a violin, strange and heartbreakingly familiar all at once. Justin quickly closed the program, not wanting to look, to read the glossy, professional biography. Tonight would be about the music, about the celebration of one of the world's foremost gay composers, and nothing, not even the still-burning gaze of a treacherous ex-lover, would mar that.

The noise of the crowd died down as the orchestra filed onstage and began to tune their instruments. Ethan was not among them, and Justin had no doubt that he was still in his dressing room backstage, admiring himself in the mirror and plotting about how best to take advantage of whatever charming Juilliard students might be attending tonight, their desire hidden in the darkness of the third balcony.

The orchestra members finally seemed to have come to some agreement, and the first violinist -- the concertmaster, as Justin dimly remembered Ethan telling him -- rose and played a single note, in which the entire orchestra joined. The conductor, a gracious red-haired woman in a flowing black pantsuit, entered to a round of applause. She shook the hand of the concertmaster, mounted the podium, and raised her baton. There was a moment of perfect silence, and then the music began.

Justin was not a particular aficionado of classical music; even when he had dated Ethan, he had always been far more interested in the quick movements of the musician than in the sounds that resulted. As a result, though he found the music tedious, he was fascinated to watch the controlled frenzy of bows and moving bodies as the musicians worked on stage to make the sound. From habit, he removed the paper announcing the reception from the program, turned it over, pulled a pencil from his pocket, and began to draw, quietly, in the gloom.

_The Storm_ inspired only a few broad sketches of the orchestra. Justin found it dull, and his attention began to wander to the graceful contours of the hall. The fanfare at the beginning of the _Capriccio Italien_ captured his attention again, and he drew some fanciful heralds in extravagant Renaissance costumes. _Mozartiana_ was rather startlingly different in style from the other two pieces, and Justin quickly opened his program to discover that it was a series of Tchaikovsky's orchestrations of piano pieces by Mozart. This was interesting enough that Justin spent some time trying to puzzle through the program notes describing the music that he was hearing. By the end of the final movement, he decided that he had in fact enjoyed _Mozartiana_ far more than he had expected, and resolved to mention this to Barry.

During the intermission, Justin bought a glass of champagne. It was overpriced even for New York, but he didn't think that he would be able to get through the violin concerto without a little fortification. A gaggle of young people passed by, chattering about the conductor and various technical aspects of the music. Justin supposed that they were student musicians, and he wondered if this was the sort of conversation that Ethan had had with his friends at PIFA when Justin wasn't around. That led him to wonder what exactly had happened to Ethan; he had left PIFA at the end of the year after Justin had broken up with him, and Justin had not heard a word about him since. He had not been close enough to anyone else in the music department to ask, and none of his fellow visual art students had known Ethan. And, anyway, Justin himself had left PIFA not long after Ethan had.

The crowd, having picked up on some signal that Justin had missed, began to move back into the concert hall. Justin went along, found his seat again, and picked up his program. The biography inside would, he realized, be able to tell him what had become of Ethan in the years since PIFA, but Justin decided that he preferred not to know quite yet. First, he would see what Ethan had become.

The orchestra retuned quickly, with almost none of the ceremony of the beginning of the concert. When they had finished, the conductor returned to the stage, followed by a short, still-slender man in a tailcoat carrying a violin. The audience applauded loud and long, and the man took a bow. When he straightened and glanced out over the audience, Justin's heart leapt to his mouth. Ethan was older, and the lithe quickness of his youth had developed into a more deliberate grace. The ridiculous little patch of hair on his chin was gone, and his dark curls showed a liberal sprinkling of gray. But his eyes still burned with the same intensity and passion that had swept Justin off his feet as a teenager. Even after twenty-one years, his mind and his body recognized Ethan immediately.

He paid almost no attention to the music, relegating the orchestra to a frenzied background noise almost completely irrelevant to the soaring wail of the violin and the graceful movement of the performer. This was the way he loved to remember Ethan, the compact body alive with the music that he claimed flowed right through him, completely focused on the violin that Justin knew was his one and only true love.

Mesmerized, Justin pulled out his pencil and the reception notice and began to sketch in the center of the paper, the part that he had carefully left blank as if in preparation for this moment. As his fellow audience members, who no doubt understood more about the music but far less about the performer than Justin did, sat enraptured by the display of technical and artistic brilliance on stage, Justin spent four movements capturing the quintessence of movement, of fire, of passion, absolutely none of it meant for him, but wounding him to the quick in spite of himself.

When the concerto was over, Justin lost himself in the applause along with everyone else. He watched in a dream as Ethan shook hands with the conductor and the concertmaster, and walked off the stage. He almost could not bear it when Ethan returned for an encore, a merry little dance of his own composition that seemed to scratch and irritate at the raw place in Justin's soul. He waited politely through the applause, and by the time it died down, he knew what he had to do.

The crowd seemed to take forever to exit the concert hall. At last, Justin found himself in the lobby, and turned his sketch paper over. The reception would take place in some endowed greenroom. Justin asked the bartender from whom he had bought his overpriced champagne for directions. The bartender gave them with a very particular gleam in his eye, and gave Justin as much of an elevator look as he could from behind his station. Vaguely disgusted, Justin hurried away.

* * *

He found the proper room with only a few false turns. The party was already in full swing by the time he approached, and the laughter and conversation echoed through the halls. At the door to the party, a uniformed Lincoln Center employee approached him.

"May I have your ticket, sir?" he asked.

Flustered, Justin fished in his coat pocket and found the ticket that Barry had given him.

The employee glanced at it and shook his head. "I'm sorry, sir. This event is by invitation only."

Justin caught a glimpse of Ethan over the man's shoulder, standing in the middle of the room with a glass in his hand, laughing and chatting with his admirers. He did not know that Justin was only a few feet away, and Justin burned with the need to make him know. He pulled the scrap of sketch paper from his program and turned it over.

Unfortunately, it only confirmed what the employee had said. The reception was invitation-only, and the paper was not an invitation, only an announcement. Desperate, Justin flipped the paper over and presented the sketches to the employee.

"You have to let me in," he said. "I know Ethan. I've known him for years. I have to see him."

The employee's mouth formed a tight, straight line. "I'm sorry, sir," he repeated, "but if you do not have an official invitation, I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

"No! Let me see him. He knows me, I know he does."

Justin must have spoken louder than he had intended, because Ethan glanced over in the direction of the door. Drawn by the commotion, he approached.

"What is it?" he asked, shrugging off the two gentlemen in tuxedos who tried to pull him away.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Gold," the employee said. "There is a gentleman at the door who is trying to enter the reception without an invitation. He claims that you . . . know him?"

The employee handed Justin's sketches to Ethan. Ethan looked at them, blinking in surprise. He moved closer to the door, and at last, his eyes met Justin's. For an instant, they were so close that Justin could have reached out to embrace Ethan, or punch him in the jaw. Torn between these two options, he did neither, but stood frozen, allowing Ethan to stare into his eyes for a moment that seemed to last forever. Recognition flared in his eyes, and a host of emotions flickered across his face, all in the span of an eternal instant.

Quickly, Ethan turned to the employee and put the paper with the sketches back in his hand.

"No," he said. "He's not one of my friends."

And then he was gone, melted back into the crowd of cruelly laughing people. The employee returned the paper to Justin and politely nudged him away from the door. "I'm sorry, sir," he said. "This party is private. I have to ask you to leave."

And he shut the door in Justin's face.

* * *

Stung deeper than he had expected, Justin wandered the empty corridors of Avery Fisher Hall until he found himself back at the auditorium lobby. The bartender was just putting the last things in order at his station.

"No luck?" he asked, far more cheerfully than Justin would have appreciated.

"Not yet."

"Ummm. You know, if you're looking for a good time, I get off in five minutes. I can show you where to go. You're not bad looking for a guy your age, you know?"

Justin turned his best Brian sneer on the presumptuous little twinkie in the vest and bow tie, pulled a twenty from his pocket, and held it before the kid's nose. "Don't you think I'm a little rich for your blood? How about you tell me where I can get what I really want, and there might be something in it for you."

The bartender sighed and glared at Justin with all the wounded pride of a twenty-three-year-old. He wavered for a moment, torn between his hurt feelings and the twenty-dollar bill staring him in the face, but New York has never been a cheap town, and at last, he relented.

"I'm not supposed to tell anyone," he said. "Hell, I'm not even supposed to know. But . . . you overhear things, right?"

Justin nodded and waved the twenty at him.

"The Buckingham," said the bartender. "On Fifty-Seventh Street. I don't know which room number."

"That's enough for me." Justin tucked the twenty into the bartender's vest and left the building.

He found an all-night coffee shop with a view of the entrance to the Buckingham Hotel, sat down by the window, and ordered a latte. As he waited for the reception to end, he finally opened the program to the artist's biography and began to read about Ethan's life in the years since Justin had thrown bloodied roses in his face and walked out the door.


	3. Andante

**3. Andante

* * *

**

Justin nursed his latte and a soggy bear claw for a little over an hour. At last, a car pulled up in front of the Buckingham, and Ethan got out, carrying a violin in a case in one hand and a small, neat briefcase in another. He exchanged a few words with the driver, then entered the hotel as the car pulled away.

Justin forced himself to wait another fifteen minutes, flipping through the program one last time before carefully folding it and placing it in his coat pocket. He left a generous tip for the barista, tossed the remains of the inedible bear claw in the trash, and loped across the street. The trick to this sort of thing, as Brian had taught him, was to show no fear. Simply walk into a place and own it, as though you have every right to be there, and doors will open, as if by magic. Justin straightened his coat, took a deep breath, and pushed breezily through the glass-paneled door into the elegant lobby of the Buckingham Hotel.

He ignored the tasteful, quietly expensive decorations and strode directly over to the flatteringly lit reception desk. A young woman in a polyester blazer turned to him.

"May I help you, sir?" she asked.

Justin gave her his friendliest smile. "Yes, please. I heard that an old friend of mine is in town, and I'd like his room number."

The young woman hesitated for a moment. "What is the name of the guest you are trying to reach, sir?"

"That would be a Mr. Ethan Gold. He was playing a concert at Lincoln Center."

The receptionist gave him a little bit of a fish-eye, but her voice remained polite and professional. "I'm sorry, sir, we do not give out the room numbers of our guests. However, I can call up to Mr. Gold's room if you'd like."

"Please do. Tell him an old friend is here to see him."

She picked up an in-house telephone. "May I have your name, sir?"

"Justin Taylor."

She nodded her thanks, and pressed a few buttons on her switchboard. After a moment, she spoke. "Good evening, Mr. Gold, this is Reception. I have a gentleman downstairs, a Mr. Justin Taylor, who claims that he is an old friend of yours?" She paused to listen to the reply, then nodded. "I see. Thank you, sir. I'll tell him . . . and thank you, too."

She hung up the phone and turned to Justin with a look of disapproving surprise. "Mr. Gold will see you, Mr. Taylor," she said. She was too discreet to mention the room number out loud, but wrote it down on the back of one of the hotel's business cards. Justin gave her another broad smile for thanks, and headed for the elevator.

* * *

The Buckingham is not an especially large hotel, and it did not take Justin long to find the correct room. He took a moment outside the door to compose himself. Now that he was here, he realized that he had no idea what to say to Ethan. He wasn't even completely sure what he wanted from the encounter. All he knew was that he had to see Ethan again, to face the first boy who had ever betrayed him. Well, maybe Ethan would be so kind as to start the conversation. After all, he had been warned that Justin was coming. Justin squared his shoulders, lifted his chin, and knocked on the door.

He heard footsteps, and the sound of a lock being flipped, and then the door opened, and Ethan stood there in his dress pants and shirt sleeves, rumpled, wary . . . and still heartbreakingly beautiful, even at forty years old. Justin's fears about not knowing what to say melted as hurt, angry words tumbled from his mouth.

"Why didn't you acknowledge me at the reception?"

Ethan closed his eyes briefly. "Justin, I --"

"I know you recognized me! I saw it in your face. Don't try to deny it!"

"Will you come in already?" Ethan snapped, and then his voice softened. "Come in, sit down, and have a drink. We can discuss this like adults."

Much as Justin hated to admit it, Ethan was right. He reluctantly allowed himself to be led into the hotel room. The place was cheerful, the decor managing to be both tasteful and a little bit funky at the same time. Two violin cases lay on a small glass table, and Ethan's briefcase full of sheet music sat open on the desk. Ethan ushered Justin to a small couch. "Have a seat."

"Thanks." Justin sat down and appreciated the cushions, just soft enough to be comfortable. "This is a nice place."

Ethan nodded. "I always stay here whenever I'm in New York. How about a drink? Red wine okay? There's a few bottles of a nice bordeaux in here, I think." Justin nodded, and Ethan disappeared to -- was that an actual kitchenette? Justin revised his inner estimation of the Buckingham up a notch.

Ethan clattered around, and Justin recalled what he had said a moment earlier. "Whenever you're in New York? How often do you come?"

"About once a year, doing different things."

"Why didn't I ever see you before?"

Ethan returned from the kitchen with two glasses of wine. He gave one to Justin, then sat down in an armchair across from him. "Mostly I'm here on business, and I don't have time to look up old lovers. Besides, we did break up rather unpleasantly, what, twenty years ago? It would never have occurred to me that you'd want to see me. Clearly, I was wrong, but . . . " he finished the sentence with a vague wave of his wineglass in Justin's general direction.

"So this is just the place where you take adoring Juilliard students to fuck?" It was a cruel thing to say, but Justin found that he was in a vindictive mood tonight.

Ethan gave a wry smile. "You know, up until a couple of years ago, I would have said yes. Then I got invited to give a master class, and all of a sudden, I just . . . can't. They all look like my students to me now, and I can't fuck my students. I just can't."

"Well, at least you've learned some restraint."

"Justin, don't. I don't have the energy for it." Ethan leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. "Look, I'm sorry I didn't invite you in to the reception. It wasn't a pleasure party. It was essentially a business meeting, full of managers and orchestra directors and recording executives. The classical music industry is in dire straits, as it has been for a hundred years, ever since wax cylinders gave way to 78s. New, exciting works and faces are needed. That sort of thing. It wasn't the time or the place for you."

Justin had to admit that Ethan had a point. Crashing the reception had been a foolish idea. He took a sip of wine and said nothing. The silence between them began to stretch out.

"You left PIFA," Justin said, when the silence began to grow awkward. "I didn't see you around campus much after we broke up."

Ethan shrugged. "I transferred," he said. "That year was pretty tough for me, for a number of different reasons. You were part of it, but there was other stuff, too. There was the Heifetz competition, that slimeball recording guy, the program in Harrisburg . . . and I was also slowly realizing that PIFA was not a good school for me. Their music department is pretty second-rate, and I realized that I'd gone as far as I could with the best violin teacher there. So I auditioned for the New England Conservatory, got in, and got my degree there. How about you?"

Justin gave a wry smile. "I dropped out. Political reasons."

"I bet Brian Kinney was behind it."

"You could say that."

"I knew it." Ethan grinned. "Well, it doesn't seem to have hurt you much. You look like you've done pretty well even without them."

"I have."

Another awkward silence fell. Justin rose from the couch and went to look at the violin cases. Neither one was particularly new, but he thought he recognized a little heart that he had scratched on one with a pin, almost invisible now. "You've still got Misha."

"Yup." Ethan came over and flipped the case open. The violin gleamed the color of whiskey, cradled in blue velvet. Ethan ran one finger gently over its curves. "I use Misha mostly for practice and for playing with my quartet."

"Right. The Fiddlers on the Roof." At Ethan's startled look, Justin laughed. "I read your bio in the program while I was waiting for you. Five times."

"Ah." A smile curled at Ethan's lips. "We promote works by Jewish composers, and we usually have a big event for Yom Hashoah. Zayde would have loved it." For a moment, his face melted into softness at the memory of his grandfather, then he shook it off. "Anyway, the other one is an endowed Stradivarius. I use it when I'm performing with the Symphony and when I'm doing big-ticket events like this one. I've also got an unaltered Strad that I use with the chamber group."

Justin nodded, impressed in spite of himself. "You've done pretty well for yourself," he admitted.

"I have." Ethan snapped Misha's case shut. "You know, I have a feeling that the conversation we are about to have is going to require far more than a single bottle of bordeaux. I don't like to eat before I perform, and the hors d'oeuvres at the reception were abominable. I am going to order a pizza. Care to partake?"

"Sure." At Justin's age, it would mean a longer session on the treadmill the next day, but it didn't seem right to refuse. He retreated to the couch and waited while Ethan ordered a large mushroom and pepper pizza.

* * *

Forty minutes later, the elegant hotel room smelled deliciously of cheap pizza, and the conversation had become much more animated, lubricated by melted cheese and rich bordeaux. They had each described the paths of their lives over the past twenty-one years, and the stories had not been dissimilar. Both men had struggled at first, taking odd jobs to supplement their incomes. Lovers had come and gone, and they had become established in their professions, earning the respect of critics and colleagues alike. Now they were both beginning to accept the administrative tasks that the art world entrusts to those it respects the most.

Ethan described the tours and educational work that he did with both Fiddlers on the Roof and his chamber ensemble, a group called Cecilia that performed on historically accurate instruments for audiences of schoolchildren. In return, Justin talked about the exhibits he had curated, including the Lichtenstein, and described some of his plans to open a gallery of his own. They chatted comfortably around mouthfuls of pizza, and for a golden while, it was as though there had never been discord between them, and Justin could almost imagine that they had parted amicably and been friends ever since.

He took a swallow of wine. "Ethan," he said, ignoring the buzz in his head that warned that this was not the best question to ask at that moment, "you've done so well for yourself. But is there anything that didn't happen? Anything that . . . that you regret, that you'll never have a chance to do again?"

Ethan paused in the middle of biting off a piece of pizza. Cheese strands hung in the air between his mouth and the slice, and he twirled them delicately around one finger. With an air of sober deliberation, he chewed and swallowed, set his pizza slice down, took a sip of wine, and wiped his hands on a paper napkin before he spoke.

"Yes," he said. "Of course I have regrets. You don't get to be our age without regrets, Justin."

"What do you regret?"

Ethan stared at the half-eaten pizza in the box. He appeared to be considering the question seriously. Justin let him take his time, already wondering if the question had been foolish.

When Ethan made his decision, he looked up, but his eyes were still turned inward. "My biggest regret in life," he said, slowly and distinctly, "is that I never had the opportunity to perform with Daniel Barenboim. Our paths never quite managed to cross, and then he died a couple of years ago. That's what I regret the most."

Oh. Of course. The news shouldn't have come as quite so much of a blow to Justin, but he attributed it to the wine he had drunk. Something like that would be important to Ethan, who loved nothing and no one more than his music. It was completely foolish to expect that Ethan would ever regret anything so personal as a long-ago lover, but still, Justin could not help the hollow feeling that seemed to grow inside him, pushing aside the desire for any more pizza.


	4. Allegro Vivacissimo

**4. Allegro Vivacissimo

* * *

**

"Justin, stop it!"

Ethan's light swat on Justin's arm shocked him out of his stupor. "Stop what?" he mumbled.

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself. It wasn't attractive when you were nineteen, and it's even less attractive now."

"I am not feeling sorry for myself." Justin picked up his piece of pizza again and took a big bite to prove it.

Ethan merely laughed. "Don't try to hide it," he said. "It's too late at night, and anyway, I know you. You had the same 'how could you do this to me?' look on your face as you did that day you tore up your hands on my roses just to show how angry you were."

Stung, Justin tried to sting back. "I was right to be angry at you then."

Ethan sighed, and looked away for a moment. "Yes. You had every right to be angry at me." He looked back, and there was a gleam in his eye. "But you have to admit, you picked a pretty dramatic way of expressing that anger."

"You're right." Justin had to smile a little now. "Brian still calls me on being a drama queen."

"He's right. You are. I think that's why I loved you then, because you were as much of a drama queen as I was."

"Are you still a drama queen?" Justin asked.

Ethan grinned at him. "I don't know. I have my moments, I guess. But I do have to tell you that I don't spend my nights weeping over what I could have had with you. It's just part of the past now. I'm sorry if it hurts, but it's the truth."

Justin managed a small pout. "The least you could have done was mourned over the love you threw away for . . . oh, a year or so."

"But that's not how it works, and you know it," Ethan replied. "It wasn't a grand passion meant for all eternity, whatever we said at the time. We were kids, then, Justin. All of nineteen years old. We knew bupkis about the world, or each other, for that matter."

He started to clear away the remains of the pizza. Justin gathered their napkins and paper plates together. "But it was something real between us."

"Yes, it was." Ethan carried the pizza box into the kitchenette and put it in the refrigerator. "And it was good, while it lasted, and it ended like most relationships between nineteen-year-olds."

Justin stalked after him and flung the paper goods into a trash can. "You lied to me."

"Yes, I lied to you." Ethan turned to face him. "And it ended there, because we were nineteen. If we'd been older, well, we could have talked it out. People do that, and they get on with their lives. But neither one of us was mature enough to do that."

"I was mature then," Justin sniffed.

"Like hell you were. You were still mooning over Brian Kinney even after you moved in with me."

For a moment, Justin stood frozen in the dim light of the hotel kitchenette. He hadn't wanted to admit it at the time, but it was true. He had always been in love with Brian in one way or another. Now that he thought back on it, even after he had moved from the loft into Ethan's little garret, there had always been three in their bed. He had lied to Ethan as much as Ethan had lied to him. Chastened, he dropped his gaze to his feet.

"We still see each other," he offered. "He loves me."

"I'm glad." And the hell of it was, Ethan really did sound glad. "I'm not surprised to hear it, but I'm glad for you. It's what you wanted."

A little tendril of emptiness crept back inside Justin, but he ignored it. "You say that like our relationship meant nothing to you."

"No. It meant a lot, especially at the time." Ethan leaned against the refrigerator and scrubbed his hands over his eyes. "But it's been twenty years since then, and I've put it into perspective."

"Yeah? What perspective is that?"

Ethan gave Justin a nudge, prodding him out of the confines of the kitchenette. They returned to the main room where their glasses and half a bottle of bordeaux still stood waiting for them. Ethan shoved Justin's glass into his hand. "The perspective that I was nineteen, horny, desperate for someone to fuck, and there you were. Also nineteen, also horny, feeling neglected. We were both poor artists with what we thought were pasts, and we turned out to be more in love with our own baggage than with each other. End of story."

Justin took a swig of wine and remembered Ethan's face the morning after the Rage party, serene and untroubled, and utterly content with his life. "You didn't have any baggage," he murmured.

"That you saw, at least." Ethan flopped down on the couch next to Justin, twirling his wineglass between his fingers, his gaze turned inwards. "I had an older guy who broke my heart like Brian broke yours, my Zayde was sick and dying, I was stuck at a second-rate music school -- perfect match for a kid who still wanted his old lover, I suppose."

Justin snorted. "That's hardly baggage."

"Maybe." Ethan flicked his eyes in Justin's direction. "Did you ever see anybody about the bashing?"

Time froze. Justin was sure his heart had stopped, and he would be dead, at age forty, from a heart attack, in the hotel room of an ex-lover, and still the worst part about it would be that his last memory would have been a vision of Chris Hobbes's sneering face.

And then there was an enormous shiver that ran all the way through his body, and time started to flow again, and Justin's heart resumed beating as though it had never stopped. And Ethan was looking at him with an expression of concern, but he hadn't moved, and the whole thing, the heart attack, the death, the rebirth, had all taken place in one instant.

"It was a long time ago," Justin whispered.

Ethan's mouth tightened into a thin, angry line. "So you didn't. See anyone, I mean."

"How did you --? I never told you about it."

"You didn't have to," Ethan said gently. "The trial was in the paper, on the TV, on the radio . . . everywhere. I'd heard all about it long before I actually met you." He reached over and put a hand on Justin's shoulder, and there was nothing in that touch but concern for an old friend's old pain.

Justin gave a snort of nervous laughter. It seemed that he owed Ethan an explanation. It wouldn't be adequate, words were never adequate to explain it, but fuck, he ought to at least try to explain to Ethan why those lies had always been there, poisoning them right from the beginning. "Brian saved my life."

It wasn't enough. Of course it wasn't enough. Ethan said nothing, just a noncommittal "Mmm," to encourage Justin to continue.

"He took me in afterwards. Helped me get my life back together."

"Ah," Ethan said, as if that explained things. "And look how well he did that."

"What do you mean?"

"Look," Ethan said, setting his glass down and turning to look Justin straight in the eye. "Brian Kinney had his qualities -- still has them, I'm sure -- but he was not anywhere close to being a licensed shrink. Frankly, I'm surprised that no one got you into therapy after an assault like that."

The thought had occurred to Justin, too, over the years. "My asshole father took me off his health insurance," he said, not even trying to keep the bitterness from his voice. "And who'd want to see those campus shrinks? All they ever did was humor screwed-up emo artist kids."

"Like you and me?" Ethan's wry comment earned a weary chuckle from Justin. Ethan smiled and leaned towards Justin a little. "Seriously, its not too late. You've got insurance of your own now. You can afford it."

Justin glanced away, hoping that Ethan would miss the flush spreading over his fair skin, or mistake it for the effects of too much alcohol. "It's old news," he said. "No therapist would be interested."

"Are you kidding?" Ethan laughed. "What therapist wouldn't want a chance to shrink Justin Taylor, creator of the infamous _Rage Against The Dying Of The Queer_ exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago --"

Justin whipped his head around so fast he was sure he'd feel it the next morning. "You saw that?"

Ethan waved a hand in a "shut up" gesture. "Yes, I got back to Chicago from a tour two days before it closed. You'd left town by then. Don't interrupt. As I was saying, who wouldn't want to shrink the famous creator of -- what did the _Trib_ reviewer call them, 'searing and intensely personal images of beauty rising from the ashes of violence' -- who's never really dealt with taking a baseball bat to the head at his senior prom?"

Justin opened his mouth, then shut it again. "Okay. You have a point."

"It's not too late." Ethan's eyes bore into Justin's. "You can afford it. And it's not like there isn't anyone who can help you, either. This is New York, for fuck's sake! There must be whole neighborhoods full of therapists."

"I do my own therapy," Justin snapped. "My art is my therapy."

"Sure, if you want to stay messed up your whole life."

"What if I can't afford it?" Justin cried. "I don't mean the money; if there's one thing I've learned from Brian, it's that money isn't important."

"Hell of a person to learn that from."

"Don't interrupt. I mean . . . look, you're an artist, you ought to understand." The words tumbled faster out of Justin's mouth, as if he'd relinquished control to some dimly comprehended terror within. "What if I lose it? What if I lose that -- that core, you know? That place inside me. Where the art comes from. Maybe I couldn't have done _Rage Against The Dying Of The Queer_ if I'd been shrunk. Maybe I wouldn't have been able to do any of it. Maybe I wouldn't have a career at all. Maybe I won't be able to make any more art."

Ethan was silent for a long moment after Justin's words stopped. He appeared to be considering what Justin had said. Finally, he rose from the couch and moved over to the table where his violins sat. He unlatched Misha's case and removed the instrument. Justin watched without comment as Ethan tightened and rosined the bow and went through the ritual of tuning Misha. When he was satisfied, Ethan fixed Justin's eyes with his own to make sure that Justin was watching him. He touched the bow to the strings and began to play.

It was nothing that Justin had ever heard Ethan play before, and the difference shocked him. Gone were the long, impossibly graceful lines of music with the intricate filigreed cadenzas that had astonished Justin twenty-one years earlier. This music was harsh and angular, almost discordant, and yet it had its own indefinable appeal. In short, it was music that resembled Justin's own artwork in its combination of violence and beauty. Justin sat transfixed, listening, until Ethan ground out the last note.

"Bartók's Solo Violin Sonata, first movement," Ethan said.

"Bartók?" Justin raised an eyebrow. "He isn't very romantic."

"No. He was a Modernist. Bet you're surprised to hear me play that."

Justin nodded. "Very much so. Whatever happened to Ravel's _Valses Nobles e Sentimentales_?"

Ethan shrugged. "I still play them sometimes. But, see, that Bartók I just played for you? I absolutely hated it when I was nineteen. I was a Romantic through and through back then. Now, I love Bartók, Schoenberg, Pärt -- do you get what I'm aiming at, Justin? My art has grown over the years. I haven't abandoned the Romantics -- you heard me play that Tchaikovsky tonight -- but I play other things now, too. The whole post-Debussy world has opened up for me."

"And you think that therapy would open up a new world for me?"

"Might free you up to pursue some new directions, sure." Ethan set Misha down gently in the case. "No one's asking you to abandon your _Rage_ series, but why not consider adding to it? Therapy might give you something new to draw about and make you feel better about yourself."

Justin shrugged. "Maybe."

"Think about it." Ethan loosened the bow, put it away, and snapped the violin case shut. A frown passed over his face, and he turned to Justin. "Why did you come to the concert tonight?" he asked. "I've played in New York before, but I didn't see you until tonight."

Justin sighed and glanced at the clock. It was almost two in the morning, far too late at night for anything less than total honesty. "You'll laugh," he said. "I got the ticket as a birthday present."

Ethan smiled. "Yeah? How appropriate. Just like old times. But where's your date?"

"Huh?"

"Your date." Ethan's mouth twisted into an impish little smirk. "Most people buy concert seats in pairs. You know, to take their loved one out on the town. What'd you do, find another Brian who just sends you out on your own?"

"Not quite." Justin sketched out the story, of how Barry had sent the ticket, and of how he had planned not to use it, but then Daniel had bailed on their planned date. "So I figured, what the hell? I'd come and get a little culture."

"Really is just like old times," Ethan said. "I'm still your second choice after the man you really want has abandoned you."

"I didn't mean it like that."

"I know." Ethan's gaze softened. "Believe it or not, I have gotten over you, and I don't mind being your backup plan. I'm just glad that you're being honest about it." He moved to the couch and gave Justin a quick kiss on the cheek. "Happy birthday."

"Thanks." Justin heaved himself off the couch with a groan that told him that his forties were going to be significantly more work than his twenties or his thirties. "It's late. I should get going. It was . . . nice. To see you again."

"Yeah." Ethan smiled. "Nice. Old times. Listen, take a cab home tonight. It's late." He pulled a bill from his wallet and pressed it into Justin's hand, ignoring Justin's protests. "My birthday gift to you. A ride home, least I can do."

"Okay."

Ethan walked Justin to the door of the hotel room and embraced him. "You take care of yourself," he said. "I mean it."

Justin smiled back at his old lover. "Maybe."

And he walked out the door, with a heart lighter than he ever would have expected it to be.

* * *

END

* * *

Afterword: Many thanks to everyone who has read and enjoyed this story. I know that Ethan is far from the most popular character on this show, but I like him, and I think he deserved better than what CowLip gave him.


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